OS X 10.9 Developer Preview | Install on a Mac Pro 1,1

UPDATE, JANUARY 9, 2014: Hi there! Looks like there’s a new and better method of installing Mavericks without the need of using Chameleon, it boots natively! I haven’t personally tested it yet, but after reading the thread, it looks promising. Looks like it forwards EFI64 calls over to the EFI32 firmware. Always remember to back up your data before tinkering with the System xD.

UPDATE, NOVEMBER 14, 2013: Sorry about the slow updates, been busy lately. Just a quick update, I’ve gotten all DP releases and the GM release of Mavericks to run flawlessly on my Mac Pro. I haven’t tried the official release yet, but hopefully will before the end of the week. Cheers to a successful install :).

2) An upgraded graphics card. The stock NVidia card included with the Mac Pro won’t do. You can get by with using the card, but won’t have Quartz Extreme enabled (Everything on screen should seem very slow/laggy as hell) until you swap the card out with a newer and supported one.

3) A spare hard drive to use as a startup disk for Chameleon and the OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) Install. Consider getting a drive with at least 20GB of space (although a 10GB drive will also do).

NOTE: WE WILL BE DOING A CLEAN INSTALL! YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO PROCEED WITH JUST AN “UPGRADE” BUT CHANCES ARE SOMETHING WILL FAIL, EITHER IMMDIATELY AFTER THE UPGRADE PROCESS OR LATER ON DOWN THE ROAD.

PART 1 | GETTING THE STARTUP DISK READY

1) Open “Disk Utility”

2) Select the spare hard drive in the sidebar, then proceed to the “Partition” tab.

OPTION A (STANDARD) – RECOMMENDED

a) Now click on the drop down box under “Partition Layout” and select “2 Partitions”.

b) Name the first partition “Startup Disk” and resize it to 1GB.

c) Name the second partition “OS X Setup” and use the remainder of disk space for this partition.

OPTION B (ADVANCED) – NOT RECOMMENDED

NOTE: PROCEED WITH OPTION B IF YOU WANT A RECOVERY OS INSTALLED. What I mean by “Recovery OS” is a second copy of OS X intended for recovery purposes should you happen to get locked out of your main OS.

a) Now click on the drop down box under “Partition Layout” and select “3 Partitions”.

b) Name the first partition “Startup Disk” and resize it to 1GB.

c) Name the second partition “OS X Setup” and resize it to 8GB (You can get away with 5GB, but may end up having to reformat the whole drive if the next release of OS X has a larger setup size).

d) Name the third partition “OS X Recovery” and use the remainder of disk space for this partition.

3) After setting up the partitions click on the “Options” button under “Partition Layout” and select “Master Boot Record”. Click Ok.

NOTE: MAKE SURE THE COMMAND GOES IN AS ONE LINE. Sometimes copying and pasting puts a carriage return in the middle. Also this command can only be performed while booted from an EFI32 system (so from a pre OS X 10.8 system or installer DVD/USB).

5) Now copy the “Extras” folder (included in the package provided to you) and place it in the root of “Startup Disk”.

a) There are two files in the “Extras” folder that require editing, “smbios.plist” and “org.chameleon.boot.plist”.

b) Add your Mac’s serial number to “smbios.plist” under “<key>SMserial</key>”.

5) Open up Disk Utility again and click on “BaseSystem.dmg” in the sidebar, then proceed to the “Restore” tab.

6) Make sure “BaseSystem.dmg” is the source image. Drag “OS X Setup” into “Destination”, afterwards hit the “Restore” button at the bottom of the window.

7) Navigate to “/System/Installation” on your “OS X Setup” drive and delete the “Packages” link, then copy the “Packages” folder from “OS X Install ESD” (mounted on your desktop) to this folder.

8) Copy “mach_kernel” and “boot” (included in the package provided to you) to the root of your “OS X Setup” drive.

9) Move onto “PART 4“.

PART 4 | INSTALLATION

NOTE: Before you proceed any further, I want to warn you that this may totally screw up your Mac. Even if you follow this tutorialto the last word, I may have made a mistake. Backup everything and have a spare Snow Leopard or Lion install at hand. Good Luck! REMEMBER, WE ARE DOING A CLEAN INSTALL! YOU MIGHT GET AWAY WITH AN “UPGRADE” BUT CHANCES ARE SOMETHING WILL FAIL! DON’T FORGET TO BACKUP!

1) Now reboot your Mac Pro and hold down the option key on your keyboard to bring up the list of drives.

2) Select “Startup Disk”, then tap the F8 key repeatedly until you see a list of bootable drives.

3) After choosing “OS X Setup” it should look like a normal OS X install from there.

4) Do a clean install.

a) Open Disk Utility from the Finder Bar.

b) Select the drive you’ll be installing OS X on (e.g. Macintosh HD) from the sidebar and proceed to the “Partition” tab.

c) Now click on the drop down box under “Partition Layout” and select “1 Partition”.

d) Name the partition “Macintosh HD”.

e) Click on the “Options” button under “Partition Layout” and make sure “GUID Partition Scheme” is selected. Click Ok.

5) Complete the OS X Install and move onto “PART 5“.

PART 5 | POST INSTALL

1) After completing the install, Chameleon will continue to try to boot from your “OS X Setup” drive, so we will have to edit “org.chameleon.boot.plist” to tell Chameleon to boot from your “Macintosh HD” drive.

a) Navigate to your “Startup Disk” drive and open up the “Extras” folder.

b) Open “org.chameleon.boot.plist” and set the value under <key>default partition</key> to your “Macintosh HD” partition. It’ll probably be 1,2 or 2,2 but you can check it on the Chameleon boot list if those two don’t work.

c) Copy “mach_kernel” and “boot” (included in the package provided to you) to the root of your “Macintosh HD” drive.

2) You’re finished! Hopefully everything went down smooth, but if there were any hiccups feel free to leave a comment below!

All credit is due to the incredible Jabbawok, netkas, MacEFIrom, and (some guy who’s name escapes me from the insanelymac forum) – I just put it together xD

I tried to upgrade, and it upgraded and then froze on the apple/spinning wheel screen. I ended up reinstalling from my installer drive and then updating to 10.9.1. When I get more time I may try to update the installer drive to 10.9.2 and see if that works, or I may switch to the other boot.efi solution and see if that works.

Are you using a supported video card (for instance, the Apple ATI 5770)? The stock video card is no longer supported since 10.7 Lion if I recall correctly. Upgrade cards are available from Apple in the online store.

I reinstalled using the new method (having used the Batman method before), and I have 3 monitors attached to my 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 working fine. 2 x Displayport + 1 x DVI-I, on an Apple ATI Radeon 5770.

In addition, if all you’re seeing is the verbose text boot screen, and it never loads 10.9 Mavericks, then the install has not worked correctly. You may need to fix your install or double-check your procedure. I used Oemden’s SFOTT command-line tool to create a bootable USB key for the install and it all went smoothly. (I found that other USB media, like SD cards, were not reliable for this; a proper thumb drive works perfectly.)

Hi just one update, I’ve failed twice to upgrade to 10.9.2 with chameleon metodh, seems that the replace boot.efi files is not enough.. (osx stuck on boot) but now I solve without reinstall:
I’ve updated to 10.9.2, after that reboot with another disk, change the boot.efi files
/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi and
/usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi
with custom boot.efi from user Tiamo of Macrumors: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?page=2&t=1598176
thanks a lot for this!, and now don’t use anymore chameleon metodh, you have just to reboot from main partition

I don’t know if it is better or not than “old” chameleon metodh but works!
ciao

The clarity in your put up is just excellent and that i
can think you are an expert on this subject. Fine along with your permission let me to take hold of your RSS
feed to keep up to date with coming near near post.
Thank you 1,000,000 and please carry on the rewarding work.